The ambitious rookie entry at the world famous hill climb competition on June 30th will be piloted by the Baltic touring car champion Janis Horeliks.

This year Pikes Peak is about to see the 91st gathering of daring drivers to climb the 20 km course to the summit at 4300 m above sea level. Over years, the entire length of the run has been gradually paved, bringing about the dominance of tarmac specification cars. The 2013 edition will feature an epic battle between the current record holder Rhys Millen, legendary Tajima Nabuhiro, aka Monster, and the 9-time world rally champion Sebastien Loeb in a 4×4 twin-turbocharged Peugeot 208.

eO PP01 presentation. Make sure to press CC (Captions) in the video progress bar for English subtitles.

So far no electric car has won the event outright but they are becoming a force to be reckoned with. As lithium ion batteries and electric motors shrink in size and grow in power, competitive results can be achieved over the short and twisty distance. And compared with internal combustion engines, electric motors suffer no power loss at high altitude where the air is rare.

Utilising years of experience in motorsport engineering, eO has designed a tubular spaceframe prototype with a bought-in carbon fiber body kit. The PP01 chassis features an innovative 400 kW all-wheel electric drive architecture which makes it a worthy contender.

“We know our technology is capable of breaking the current Pikes Peak record,” says eO chief engineer Andris Dambis, “but there is an incredibly tight field battling it out this year. We therefore acknowledge the unpredictable nature of the event but nevertheless aim to showcase previously unseen electric vehicle capabilities. That is the spirit at eO.”

The company is already well known for its ambitious electric motorsport projects. eO’s electric off-roader built in 2011 has completed 18 000 km in three continents, including the gruelling Dakar rally.

A thorough testing program with eO PP01 is planned this month ahead of shipping the vehicle to Colorado in early June.

The post eO Preparing PP01 Electric Supercar for Pikes Peak appeared first on Electric Cars Report.

“Our current estimate, based on monthly sales figures from automakers, is that the 100,000th highway-capable plug-in vehicle will be sold on May 20,” says Tom Saxton, Plug In America’s chief science officer, in a statement. “We are calling this the #PIA100K mark, and we are excited to see the continued growth of the market.”

Because this is an estimate, the exact buyer and car will likely never be known, but it’s still an important symbolic milestone.

Full-year sales for 2011 were fewer than 20,000. In 2012, that number tripled to over 53,000. And it’s currently expected that this year more than 100,000 plug-in electric vehicles will be sold in the U.S.

To celebrate the 100,000 milestone Plug In America is going to have a drawing for a free vehicle charger. The drawing is open to anyone who purchases a plug-in electric vehicle between May 15 and June 15.

Highlights related to this historic moment:

- Over a quarter-million people are exposed daily to the benefits of electric transportation

- Nissan dealerships in some markets have reported that the Leaf has outsold all other Nissan models for particular sales periods this year

- Tesla’s Model S is outselling the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the BMW 7 series and the Audi A8

- Chevy Volt drivers alone have logged over 187-million electric miles

- The plug-in vehicle market is approaching 48 percent annual growth with both Battery Electric and Plug-in Hybrid vehicles finding growing interest

- Plug-in vehicle adoption exceeds the adoption of hybrid vehicles over the same timeframe in their market developments

- The domestic EV fleet now offers over 2,000 megawatts of battery storage, which may offer significant opportunities for the future management of our electrical grid and the increasing role of intermittent renewable energy sources

- Manufacturers making EVs now include Nissan, Tesla, GM, Ford, Honda, Mitsubishi, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes, and Fiat. These plug-in vehicles have received a wealth of consumer and industry awards

The post 100,000 Plug-In Electric Vehicles Sold in US appeared first on Electric Cars Report.

From launch, 46 sales agents across the UK will offer the BMW i range. Each will have specialist technical capabilities allowing them to carry out repairs to the vehicles’ high voltage batteries.

A wider service network is planned to offer extended coverage for the general service, maintenance and repair of BMW i vehicles.

Initially, two BMW i cars have been confirmed for production, the fully-electric BMW i3 megacity vehicle and the plug-in hybrid BMW i8 sports car.

The BMW i3 is BMW’s first fully-electric production car and is due to go on sale in the UK in late 2013. Like the i8, the BMW i3 features an all-aluminium chassis combined with a passenger cell made entirely from lightweight carbon fibre reinforced plastic.

BMW Group UK Managing Director, Tim Abbott said customer enquiries about BMW i are already “extremely high” with more than 6000 people registering their interest in the i brand.

Potential customers can now register their interest with one of the BMW i agents or online at www.bmw-i.co.uk.

As well as the vehicles themselves, BMW i will encompass a range of premium services for mobility aimed at optimising the use of parking spaces, recharging infrastructure, ‘smart’ navigation systems, intermodal route planning and access to other BMW vehicles on an ‘on-demand’ basis.

BMW is the first premium vehicle manufacturer to offer such a comprehensive ownership package surrounding electric mobility.

The BMW Concept i3 is currently on display in the world’s first BMW i showroom on Park Lane, London.

BMW i UK Sales Agents

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The five-star rating is the U.S. Government’s highest-possible safety rating and is determined only after severe testing procedures as part of NHTSA’s New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), which combines vehicle performance in frontal and side-impact crash tests and resistance to rollover.

The Ford Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid joins the Ford Fusion and the Ford Fusion Hybrid which already received five-star safety ratings.

NHTSA has elected to test plug-in vehicles separately from vehicles powered by gasoline internal combustion engines as the market share of electrified vehicles is increasing.

“The Fusion Energi combines the highest possible safety ratings from NHTSA and great fuel economy, two things we know customers are looking for in their vehicles,” said Steve Kenner, Global Director of the Ford Automotive Safety Office. “Our strategy is to provide our customers with a range of powertrain options in our vehicles, while still leading in fuel economy in every segment that we compete.”

The NHTSA five-star rating for the Fusion Energi comes in addition to the 2013 Fusion being named a Top Safety Pick+ from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) in December. The Top Safety Pick + designation is the highest rating the organization has for vehicle safety.

The Fusion Energi also features the Personal Safety System with safety belt technologies and front impact airbags. The Personal Safety System™ is a network of components that work together to tailor the deployment of the front airbags during frontal collisions. Other driver assist technologies available on the Fusion Energi include:

- Lane Keeping Assist
- Adaptive Cruise Control
- Rearview Camera
- Hill Start Assist
- Electronic Parking Break

The post Ford Fusion Energi Gets Top Safety Rating from NHTSA appeared first on Electric Cars Report.

According to a recent report from Navigant Research, that will begin to change in the next several years: sales of electric motorcycles and e-scooters in North America will grow from a little more than 4,000 in 2012 to more than 36,000 in 2018, a nearly ten-fold expansion, the study concludes.

“The market for electric motorcycles and e-scooters will grow as manufacturers provide more robust features, including longer range capability, better performance, and in the case of e-motorcycles, higher speeds,” says Dave Hurst, principal research analyst with Navigant Research. “The North American market is still very much in its infancy, but the United States will see strong growth, with a compound annual growth rate of greater than 50 percent through 2018.”

In Asia Pacific, scooters and low-powered motorcycles are widely used as everyday transportation. In North America, by contrast, motorcycles and scooters (including electric motorcycles and e-scooters) are more likely to be used for recreation than as a primary form of transportation.

The interest in higher-powered and touring motorcycles is higher in North America than other regions, and so electric motorcycles and e-scooters are often purchased as complements to other forms of transportation.

[source: Navigant Research]

The post Annual Sales of Electric Motorcycles and Scooters in North America Will Multiply Nearly Ten-Fold by 2018 appeared first on Electric Cars Report.

That was the farthest total distance for any NASA electric vehicle driving on a world other than Earth until Thursday.

The team operating NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity received confirmation in a transmission from Mars that the rover drove 263 feet (80 meters) on Thursday, bringing Opportunity’s total odometry since landing on Mars in January 2004 to 22.220 statute miles (35.760 kilometers).

The international record for driving distance on another world is still held by the Soviet Union’s remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 electric rover, which traveled 23 miles (37 kilometers) on the surface of Earth’s moon in 1973.

Opportunity began a multi-week trek this week from an area where it has been working since mid-2011, the “Cape York” segment of the rim of Endeavour Crater, to an area about 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) away, “Solander Point.”

Most electric vehicles on the road today rely on li-ion batteries, which must be plugged in and recharged on a regular basis. Mars rovers are millions of miles from the nearest electrical outlets or charging station, so they take a different tack.

The 25-lb. (11.5 kilograms) Sojourner generated electricity using solar arrays, with a set of three small, nonrechargeable lithium-thionyl chloride batteries serving as backup.

The much larger Spirit and Opportunity also rely primarily on solar panels and rechargeable lithium-ion batteries to store power for times when the sun isn’t shining.

Curiosity, on the other hand, is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), which converts the heat generated by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238 into electricity. RTGs have powered many NASA deep-space probes over the decades, including the twin Voyager spacecraft, which are knocking on the door of interstellar space.

The infographic below illustrates comparisons among the distances driven by various wheeled vehicles on the surface of Earth’s moon and Mars.

[source: NASA, Space.com]

The post Infographic: Out-of-this-World Electric Vehicle Records appeared first on Electric Cars Report.

In the last few years, automakers have shifted from nickel-metal hydride batteries to lithium-ion batteries.

This shift represents a major endorsement of Li-ion chemistry and its ability to perform consistently in an automotive environment.

According to a recent report from Navigant Research, total worldwide capacity of lithium-ion batteries for transportation applications will increase more than ten-fold, from 4,400 megawatt-hours (MWh) in 2013 to nearly 49,000 MWh by 2020.

The market for lithium-ion batteries will primarily be driven by the growth of battery electric vehicles, as they utilize much larger battery packs than plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Today’s BEVs use battery packs ranging from 16 kWh to 85 kWh, compared to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles that typically use packs ranging from 4 kWh to 16 kWh.

Additionally, many recently introduced hybrid vehicles, such as the Honda Civic Hybrid, use lithium-ion batteries, and the percentage of hybrids using lithium-ion technology is expected to grow steadily as automakers update their models.

[source: Navigant Research]

The post Worldwide Capacity of Lithium-Ion Batteries for EVs Will Multiply More than 10-Fold by 2020 appeared first on Electric Cars Report.

In celebration of the occasion, Zero Motorcycles representatives were in Hong Kong presenting the Hong Kong government with 59 MY 2012 Zero S motorcycles as part of Zero’s single largest fleet sale to date.

All 59 motorcycles are based on Zero’s highly popular 2012 Zero S. The Zero S has an approximate range of 89 miles (143 miles) on a single charge with a top speed of 88 miles per hour (142 km/h).

The majority of the units will be provided to the Hong Kong Police Department for patrolling and special event purposes with a small allocation of the police motorcycles going to the Hong Kong Airport Police for traffic enforcement. The Police motorcycles have been up fitted with a series of components developed exclusively for traffic enforcement.

The Hong Kong Agricultural, Fisheries and Conservation Department will be using select motorcycles at country parks. The Transport Department will be using a selected number of motorcycles to conduct motorcycle rider examinations, and the Leisure and Cultural Services Department will be using their Zero S motorcycles for general transportation throughout Hong Kong supporting public parks.

All 59 motorcycles were purchased by the Hong Kong government through YHT. Zero Motorcycles participated in an open RFP process and was awarded the contract based on meeting criteria in regards to performance, reliability, after sales commitments and the low cost of operation of the Zero S motorcycle.

The post Zero Motorcycles Signs First Eastern Asia Distributor appeared first on Electric Cars Report.

Also, saying that the consumer is not willing to trade the car combustion for an electric one is not enough to prove the failure of the EV. Of course, if you ask customers if they would like to continue driving cars powered by fossil fuels, the answer will probably be yes. But, do consumers really know what they want? If they did, no one would invest fortunes on research. Companies would just ask them what they want and everything would be solved.

Will the solution arise when the industry come up with a new product made under consumers demand? It is possible, but most of the time what happens is that a businessman believes in his own vision or in a project that is presented to him. So, saying that a survey revealed that customers prefer a car with internal combustion engines rather than the electric ones doesn’t mean much. Now, if people drive internal combustion cars for over 100 years, how can we expect them to change to electric cars overnight? Furthermore, the human being is not very conducive to change.

We must take into account that we inhabit a world completely different from that one inhabited by our parents and grandparents. Until 1960 people were riding on donkeys. A major scientific and technological development only occurred in the last 50 years.

We live in a world of almost 7 billion people and it is estimated that the population will grow to approximately 9 billion people in 2030. There are over one billion vehicles on the roads worldwide and there will be around 1.2 billion within ten or fifteen years. This is enough to drive more than 120 times around the earth, if placed in queue.

All this generates a lot of pollution. The world fleet emits around 2.8 billion tones of CO2. The cars and trucks powered by fossil fuels amount to about 25% of CO2 emissions in the world. If we intend to deliver the planet to our heirs in equal or better condition than we received it, we have to get focused to solve this problem in a concerted effort. However, we are throwing all the garbage we produce (and there isn’t little) in the backyard of our house and we think this is standard.

It is in this context that we must reflect on the hybrid and electric cars. Toyota alone has sold more than 5 million hybrid vehicles and Nissan has sold over 50,000 electric ones. In a short time they already represent around 3% of the market share and this percentage grows a little more every month.

Moreover, the fastest growing markets are currently the BRICs, where the stimuli in EVs are incipient. China, the largest car market in the world, is taking steps to achieve the goal of having 500,000 electric and hybrid cars on the streets by 2015 and 2 million by 2020. India also already has EV public policies. Automakers, governments and energy companies are working to expand the penetration of EVs in the country.

Brazil has not yet regulated the EV, but there are some state government initiatives along with automakers and electrical energy dealers, as in the partnership with Nissan in the case of taxis in São Paulo, in Rio de Janeiro with Mitsubishi and Nissan, in the case buses in Paraná with Volvo, among others. There are five projects pending in the legislature, and in a short time Brazil will be defined with public policy and it will be also encouraging the production of EV.

In line with the global expansion of government actions, the electric vehicle technology is being developed. The Tesla car, for example, has a range of 160 miles and the car battery can be partially charged in 15 minutes. The company’s shares on the stock exchange are up and Tesla reported profit in the first quarter of 2013.

This might not be the ideal, because the Tesla car is still too expensive, but there is no denying that it is a great evolution compared with the first electric models from this century. The question is how long it takes to change a paradigm (cars powered by internal combustion) of more than 100 years.

The reached conclusion is that the electric vehicle industry needs to invest more, the population needs to be better informed about EVs and government should be (or should continue to be) consistently supportive, because only then it will get an electric mobility scale. In fact, denying a solution that has low-cost for operation and maintenance, provides efficient energy, which greatly reduces air pollution and is technologically feasible does not make sense, does it?

The post How to change the paradigm of the electric car? appeared first on Electric Cars Report.

Earlier this year, FEH presented the FIA with a preliminary list of eight cities – London, Rome, Los Angeles, Miami, Beijing, Putrajaya, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro – all selected to host races for the inaugural season.

A total of 10 races are scheduled for 2014 with Bangkok adding its name to the list of candidate cities for the remaining two slots.

Since launching in August 2012, FEH has received formal letters of interest from 23 cities across five continents with the final calendar being presented to the FIA for its approval at the September 2013 World Motor Sport Council.

Formula E is a new FIA championship that brings electric vehicle racing to the people, as city centres around the world play host to an electric energy World Championship designed to promote interest and investment in electric vehicles and sustainable motoring.

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